Social Media in an Impoverished Mexican Town

I just returned from a vacation in a Akumal, Mexico. Akumal is a small town about one hour south of Cancun that survives almost entirely on eco-tourism. It is a place of great scenic beauty, but tremendous societal shortcomings. The picturesque beaches, caves, rain forests and tropical fish can be overshadowed at times by the meager shacks, lack of sanitary water and high frequency of crime. This was most noticeable on the only main road between Akumal and Cancun. It was on this road that I passed one tourist destination after another all behind great walls that mirror the magnitude of Fenway's "Green Monster" and are designed to keep out the "dangerous locals." Tourists are reminded that there is danger by the teams of security guards armed with semi-automatic machine guns.

Maybe it was because I was re-reading "Groundswell" or maybe it was because I was curious about the digital capacity of a place that had such a sharp contrast bewteen beauty and squalor, but I asked some of the locals about their use of social media. I wasn't surprised to hear that social media is not a commonly used technology in Akumal. When I said the word "Facebook" to a group of four guys it was returned with two confused looks, one indifferent response and one "oooh Facebook, ci." I inquired what that meant and found out that the lone guy in the group that knew Facebook wasn't a member, but had seen adds where brands communicated that they were on the social media platform. They were more concerned about buying their groceries, fixing their palm roofs or paying for a new bicycle tire (their primary method of transporation) than the computer or mobile technological devices it would take to operate social media. There also wasn't much need to connect with the outside world. In Akumal, most communications happen face-to-face and there isn't much need to communicate with people that you wouldn't see in person.

This isn't a grand revelation, nor will it affect marketers in any way. Brands aren't marketing their products to people that can't afford them. This revelation did give me pause to ask "why am I so wrapped up in a technology that only a small percentage of the world can truly use the way it is meant to be used?" Sometimes, in the world of business we move so quickly that we don't stop to think about the big picture. I think it is important to put some perspective in what we do and think about if the people in a place like Akumal, Mexico care about the tasks we devote 50 plus hours a week to.

Read full story

Social Media Wallflowers

Dictionary.com has the following definitions for "wallflower:"

1. a person who, because of shyness, unpopularity, or lack of a partner, remains at the side at a party or dance.

2. any person, organization, etc., that remains on or has been forced to the sidelines of any activity: The firm was a wallflower in this year's bidding for government contracts.

We've all seen a wallflower at a party who's just a little too shy to interact with other people. They eventually muster up the courage to talk to somebody, they are approached by an individual who rescues them or they eventually leave the party while having had zero interactions.

Do wallflowers exist in the social media world, either individuals or brands? Can a social media wallflower survive?

In my experience, wallflowers absolutely exist in social media. I have seen a number of individuals on various platforms that produce their own content and want to become a prominent member of a community, but don't know how to begin. They wonder who they should talk to, how they should approach them, what language they should use. Those questions and many more keep people from reaching out and joining the party.

It is also my experience that individuals become social media wallflowers by almost by accident, while many brands are wallflowers by their own volition. Many brands decide it is better for their communication strategy to simply listen to online conversation about them, but not partake in any way.

Do you have any stories about social media wallflowers, either individuals or brands?

Read full story

How to evaluate a blog

Being able to evaluate the influence and reach of a blog is an important skill for a communications professional. It is beneficial to know the possible affect of a blog publishing a mention about a brand, sharing a promotion or how many people can legitimately be reached through advertising on that blog.

Evaluating a blog can be broken down to three primary areas:

• Traffic/Reach
• Community Culture
• Content

Traffic/Reach

The traffic and potential reach for a blog centers around metrics of unique visitors, visits and page views. Some blogs make this very easy by coding in a public site meter of some sort. Gathering metrics for blogs that don’t have this is a little bit more difficult, but there are tools than can give a fairly accurate estimate.

Site meter or stat counter icons on a blog will usually be in a side bar or bottom task bar and will look like this:


They offer all the cursory information needed, as well as the ability to dive deeper into who is visiting the blog. Site meter allows for analysis of visitors by:

• geographic location
• specific IP address
• referring URLs
• entry pages
• out-clicks

If a blog doesn’t have a site meter of some kind, universal tracking tools will need to be employed to estimate traffic and reach:

Alexa Ranking:

The Alexa Ranking is derived from the millions upon millions of people using a toolbar with an Alexa component. Alexa tracks which sites these people visit and produces a ranking of all websites. This is one of the only universal ranking systems for sites. It is important to note that the lower the Alexa ranking the better. #1 would be the absolute best Alexa ranking.

Compete:

Compete uses a panel of over 2 million people across the United States. They combine internet activity and survey responses from the population used in their data. The population is comprised of a cross-section of Americans that represent the greatest variety of people possible. Compete uses this group to estimate site traffic using methodology that normalizes for lurking variables. Most sites, but not all register with Compete. If a site doesn’t register it simply means that it is not statistically relevant enough and therefore probably doesn’t generate a significant amount of traffic.

You can measure domains without creating an account, but in order to measure subdomains like xxxxx.blogspot.com, you will have to create a user name and password. Compete provides metrics for unique visitors, visits, an overall ranking and a graph that charts visitors by month.

Community Culture

Engagement numbers are integral to understanding community culture. In most industries, it is these numbers that are the true indicators of the power of a blog to influence its readers. Tools like Post Rank can show the number of engagement points for a site, including number of comments, number of times a link is shared on a social bookmarking site and link sharing on Twitter. This is a great tool to demonstrate the engagement on a blog’s community, but not all blogs register.

If the blog you are interested in measuring doesn’t register with Post Rank, you will have to collect this information manually. It is easy to gain an understanding of the average number of comments per post by averaging the number of comments per post for the last 10-20 posts, but be sure to look at the comment section to weed out comments by the blogger. In many cases you will find the blogger is actually the most active commenter and including their comments will skew the engagement numbers.

You can search a domain name or subdomain name within each social bookmarking site’s search box. The most pertinent social bookmarking sites include:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Reddit

Content

Evaluating content is completely subjective. You will need to review the content based on your own criteria and goals. It is important to align yourself with blogs that publish content you would be willing to share and direct people towards, since you will likely link share with them on a semi-regular basis.

Read full story

Social Media Adoption in B2B Companies

I just published a post on one of my company blogs about the adoption of social media by B2B companies. Feel free to check it out over at the Buzz Manager Blog.

Read full story

Social media influence vs. traditional media influence

It is widely believed that traditional media--radio, TV, newspapers, magazines--shape our conceptions of reality. The content discussed on news programs, advertisements and opinion articles can all influence our conclusions about society.

There have been a number of studies arguing that the media control doesn't necessarily influence our daily decisions, but it does shape our overall perceptions about society and culture. This includes studies by Eibach, Libby and Gilovich in 2003, Iyengar and Kinder in 1987, Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorelli in 1986 and many more.

If you think about it, traditional media can't help but influence our perceptions of reality. Even if every media outlets on all platforms was completely objective they would still influence what people thought about by deciding which stories to discuss and publish.

I bring all of this up to make a point. As social media grows, traditional media's influence over people will continue to wain. The public now has a mass platform of communication where they can dictate the content and the direction of opinion. This is no more apparent than it is when you consider that Iran protests were the second most discussed topic by influential Twitter users in 2009.

We often say social media puts power back into the hands of the consumers, but social media goes beyond the consumer/brand relationship. Social media puts the power of perception and reality into every individual that wants to take the time to evaluate it.

Read full story